If not now, when?
by Losseniaiel
Summary: Someone reaches out for salvation which he believes to be beyond him, fleeing from the darkness within. Rating is for implied violence.


If not now, when?  
  
Summary: What are the thoughts of a man reaching for redemption, sickened by bloodshed? Snape's POV as he turns away from Voldemort, running from the darkness within himself. Set just before he becomes a spy for Dumbledore the first time round.   
  
Disclaimer: Neither Snape, Voldemort, Dumbledore nor any of the other HP characters are mine. They are all the property of JKR, Warner Bros, and various publishers including, but not limited to, Scholastic Books, Bloomsbury etc. I am making no profit from this nor do I wish to. THEY ARE NOT MINE. I am a student and own nothing so please don't sue.  The title doesn't belong to me either.

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I run. I am. There is no more. My legs carry me onwards; a mile, ten miles, a hundred miles. I scarcely know anymore the difference between pain and numbness. Both engulf me, yet I am them and they cannot touch me because I know far worse things; I am far worse things.  
  
I run, an unbroken headlong rush through the night, stumbling on rough ground, my feet ensnaring themselves in grasping bramble cables, yet never faltering, never losing my momentum, invidious blackness taunting me. I run away although from what I barely comprehend anymore. I don't know if anyone could ever understand that: the malevolence which curls into the soul.  
  
I run, through the wide countryside, skirting the villages. Not sleeping, I know. Not the creatures of idyllic poems written by idiots who have never bothered to see the world they live in. But stinking of death and pain. Of my comrades. Yet even the open spaces give me no respite. There the darkness matches mine, the mists my curdled spirit. I always revelled in it, the blackness. I remember that now. The searing pain, the hoarse scream, the blanketing darkness, the sweeping shadow.  
  
Now I shiver although fire burns my lungs, but I am fast as ever. No ordinary man could do this, but I think I left my humanity behind long ago, at the time of the first anguished screams, when poison flooded my veins. My feet are raw, my cloak torn, yet what does that matter? Silver water glints in the moonlight to my left, but what is the point? I run on, trampling asphodel under my feet. Once I would have stopped and looked, but now I am only the howl of death, the bitter tang at the tail end of life. I am only twenty, yet I am old and all childish things are put away.  
  
Now there is only the straight line with no possible deviation as I storm across the moorland. That is what he said, with the malevolent flash of red eyes in the dark. Once chosen, the path is yours forever, burnt into your flesh. As I chose that path, now I cannot swerve from this thundering track through the gorse. I run from that first choice now, yet I cannot even remember what that is anymore, let alone what might save me, so caught up am I in the nightmares in my own mind. Who did I pledge allegiance to? Only burning red answers that question, the colour of blood, fire, death; there is only the all consuming night which tears at me, and the thudding of my own feet.  
  
I crash through a graveyard, slamming into tombstones, bruising the stone, for surely my own flesh is too unyielding, too inhuman to be damaged, to demonstrate vulnerability. How many people have I sent here, I wonder, as again and again I slam into the decayed inscriptions and the mildewed cherubs?  
  
My mind drifts away, yet I still run, now through a forest. I know I should not be here. Danger. Must not. An amused voice tells me so over the years. But what in this place would dare attack a creature of such darkness as me? Thorns whip at my head, catching in my black hair and scoring my pale cheeks with scarlet welts which drip blood with a cruel laziness. There is blood on my hands too. Not my own. Amazing that it should be there after so long. Will it ever come off? Did I ever know their names, these people I killed for their master? Their children's? Too much, it was suddenly far too much, yet too little. But I have blood on my hands and even the best potion will never wash it off. It stains me, tarnishes my soul. Was I ever pure like a Hufflepuff (whom I hold in contempt)? Did I ever have a Gryffindor's (whom I despise) nobility? Did I ever have anything like damn Potter has - friends, idealism? Did all the blood and screams wipe it away? Or was it never there in the first place? I am, I know, a child of the night. There is no hope for me. So why do I still run?  
  
Sometime the forest ends. I am beyond noticing until the moonlight spears me, forcing me to look up at the scene in front of me. A castle. I know it, but find no name in my memory. It hovers beyond my reach. What is it?  
  
Silver hair. Golden glasses. A blur of colour, so vibrant even in the moonlight that it hurts my eyes. Wise eyes. Blue not red. Somehow I no longer expect that. Someone standing over me, a concern to which I am not accustomed etched in every feature. How strange, I must have slumped to the wet grass.  
  
"I see you are here, child."  
  
My words are dredged up from below, from whoever I was before the blood, as memories of destruction swirl through my mind, released by my sudden halt.  
  
"Sir." It feels so natural to call him that. "Too much."  
  
"I know."  
  
The kindliness angers me, and I thrust out my blood-slicked hands.  
  
"No ... look."  
  
"Severus, did you not think that I knew that?"  
  
The Cruciatus echoes in my mind. Raw as my flesh. Dark as the primordial night. Cruel. Bitter. Pitiless. Me.  
  
"They screamed .... I made them scream. And then ... I knew it was ... too much, it was unworthy ..... It hurt. Everything. Their ... pain was too much."  
  
This time there are no words, only warm hands pulling me upright, guiding me inside the castle, away from the blood and the dark, the hollow red eyes and the green light, away from myself. Yet as I walk slowly into the castle, I suddenly, with a feeling of relief, find a name for it: Hogwarts, and then the man who holds my shoulder speaks words which will haunt my dreams and drag me back to places in which I never wish to tread again.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
  
  
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Flames will be used to burn my textbooks so I have a good excuse not to work.  Positive reviews are as welcome as hot chocolate on a cold day. 


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